MY SHOES RAP slowly along the abattoir floor. Striding between the cow corpses hanging from the railing, I reach for my phone and decide to check in on her just once, despite myself. I hit Bolton’s number.
Two rings and he answers, “Yes, Boss?”
“What did she do today?” I ask, stopping outside the door to the processing floor, the scent of bleach and raw, clean meat thick in the air. I stroke the bristles along my jawline. This is all about her. This entire evening, this entire interruption is all about finding out who killed a boy I’m pleased is dead and who put that baby inside her so I can finish him too.
My fist tightens around the phone as her confession to seeking her father for help stirs in my mind. Help where her foster mother failed her, where the police failed her.
Frowning ahead, I recall her bowed, fragile frame sinking into the chair in the witness room while the officer sneered at her confused state. She needed someone to believe in her. No one did. Neither did I…
They won’t make that mistake again.
The truth is all that my sweet girl wants.
Who took her innocence when she could not consent? Who came inside her pretty young pussy like a fucking invalid who didn’t consider the consequences? They knew she had no one. Pregnant or not. Raped or not. No one would care, and no one did…
A smooth smile rests on my lips as venomous rage races the length of each limb, my Butcher fists aching immediately.
I’ll be giving my little deer more than the truth. I’ll be giving her bloody revenge. Despite her self-preservation to not call this incident rape, I can’t call it anything else. And that thought is explosive—my Butcher head burning hotter than ever before.
“She has decided she wants to learn to cook,” Bolton says, dragging me from my own rampant torment. “She was in the kitchen most of the day with Maggie. She’s never cooked a thing in her life, Boss. Besides two-minute noodles, that is. She is just jumping straight into wanting to know how to bake a birthday cake.”
My brows pinch in. “A birthday cake? It’s not her birthday, Bolton.’
“No, Boss. She wants to make a kid’s birthday cake with little knights and a castle…” He clears his throat. “Her words, Boss, not mine.”
An ache moves into my chest. “A kid’s birthday cake.”
“That’s right,” he says, meaning threaded into each word.
Is she considering keeping him? I inhale hard, exhaling the conversation even harder, needing a rational mind that isn’t drifting to her making her son his first birthday cake in her new house, the house she bought with the money I’ll give her in exchange for her father’s death. “Make sure she has everything she needs.” I lower the phone, ready to hang up, before setting it to my ear again. ‘Watch her around glass.’
“Yes, Boss.”
Hanging up, I slide the phone into my jacket pocket, straighten my black tie for my company, and stroll into the processing room. The breaking of bones under heavy-handed hacking fills the room with an ominous drum. Off to the left, Paul is dismembering a two-hundred-kilogram cow carcass. Each violent hit of the mallet to the bone makes the two boys tied up to their chairs tremble and whimper. The smallest of the boys, fucking Landon, wheezes with anxiety.
My brother, Bronson, sits on his chair backwards, his arms folded over the top of the backrest, his eyes glued to the boys, a chilling smile on his lips. I wonder if he remembers what that was like. I wonder if it plagues him to see them after— For a split second, the sight of him tied to the chair instead inundates me, but I clench my teeth, shove it away, stop it from allowing any remorse or guilt to tamper with the justice I am to serve. I haven’t asked Bronson to work this side of the business since… Nevertheless, this is sensitive—a personal job. I didn’t want to involve the rest of the Family in the District and have them ask questions about Fawn. Didn’t want anyone to know anything about her now that…
Now that I care…
Vinny greets me at the door before falling into stride beside me as I close the gap between us and our guests. As he pulls out a chair for me, the sound of the back legs scraping the cement soars through the room, only interrupted by the mallet breaking bone. I nod my thanks but stay standing. Gripping my brother’s shoulder, I stare at the bound and gagged boys in front of me, the whites of their eyes begging me to show them mercy.
Bronson’s hand touches mine, patting lightly, never tearing his gaze from our guests. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Bron,” I say, removing my hand. “Do you know who I am?” I ask the boys, threading my fingers together and resting them in front of me. Vinny circles the young lads, removing their gags from behind their heads.
“Answer the Boss,” he states, tapping Landon over the back of the crown, flicking slick blond hair over his forehead where it clings to sweat and dirt accumulated over the past twenty-four hours.
Landon nods, his eyes bloodshot and raw, a sign of last night’s turbulent emotional state. “The mayor.”
I smile smoothly as another bang from the mallet, cracking a bone in two, hitting the table beneath, echoes around the otherwise void room. The boys flinch. “Do you know who I really am?”
They both nod.
I direct my attention to Jake, the bigger and heavier of the two. Clearly, he indulges when given the chance. If he indulged in my deer, protected the fucker who did, or, Christ, even thought about it, I’ll gladly be slicing off the parts of him that lured him into temptation. “I am here on behalf of Fawn Harlow—’
“That bitch? You serious? How much did she pay you? I can get you—’
I glance at Vinny, tightening every muscle inside me, so I don’t inch closer and slice his lips from his face for calling her a bitch. Vinny nods at me, reading my every subtle gesture. His fist meets Jake’s face to silence him, sending his head backwards, rendering it a circling lifeless weight for a few seconds of blackout glory. Then Jake regains consciousness on a hysterical whimper.
His reality rains down on him.
“Fawn is the daughter of a very important man,” I state deadpan; it’s not a lie. Dustin Nerrock is District royalty. A part of Cosa Nostra for the best part of four decades. So, whether in life or death, as my ally or my enemy, his name holds weight and demands respect, or my whole goddamn concept of this institution crumbles. These boys should lie down at Fawn’s feet, beg to be the man she walks over, for being the blood of a boss. A princess in the District. “Do you have anything to say about your actions before I enter my office and watch the footage?” Bronson and Vinny found the SD card in the side of Jake’s laptop.
Fucker.
He must enjoy watching whatever is on there… I try to control the raging current that sparks my muscles to react, to beat and maim. “I will give you a chance to repent. Just one. Please’—I widen my arms, holding my hand out to Landon—“you first.”
Landon’s anxieties are full-blown attacks now, wracking his body on the chair so violently it is any wonder it doesn’t keel over under the fitful motion. “She wouldn’t have even known,” he gasps, “if she hadn’t got pregnant,” he pants. “It wouldn’t have mattered because she wouldn’t have known.”
A loud thud shakes the boys. The mallet delivers the final blow to separate a heavy leg from the cow, dropping the entire meaty limb to the floor.
“Shut up!” Jake barks at him, sobbing and growling, a vibrating mass of attitude and stupidity. “Don’t tell him anything.” This one is dumb as shit.
“Shoot that one in the kneecap,” I state, and within seconds, Bronson blows Jake’s knee open, creating a fleshy crimson crater. Guttural howling follows me as I stride steadily towards my office and close the door, already fucking certain what it is she wouldn’t have known. Despite my desire to keep moving, to stalk back into the slaughter room and show them just how much it fucking matters, I slide onto the chair, the laptop already open and lit.
Beside the mouse is the SD drive.
Disregarding the heat firing inside my temples, I insert the SD drive, click on the only MP4 in the file, and lean back as the screen comes to life. Bathed in a light glow from surrounding dimly illuminated lights, the view of the room is visible through a sepia-style hue.
Directly across from the camera, a couch and a glass table are plain to see, but the low-light and poor-quality equipment cause the surrounding areas to be licked with darkness. Pixilated. I slide the bar across until I see a blur of people enter the room. I stop and watch my little deer in a pretty dress sit down in the centre of the couch. Her brothers: Landon, Jake, and the dead fucker, Benji, position themselves around her.
She will never be alone like that again.
My little deer.
My Cosa Nostra princess.
Mine.
Distractingly, my heart hammers against the bars of my ribs, an angry spike of adrenaline throwing it into a damn frenzy inside me, while outwardly I simply lift my leg and rest it on my knee.
Ball my hands into fists.
Tighten my entire body.
Watching the footage play out.
